


(Don't) Lift Me Up

by singtolife



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angels AU, Fallen Angels, Kuro but kinda not, Lance Angst, Lance whump, Langst, M/M, Wings, but he's redeemed, dark!shiro, shangst
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-28
Updated: 2017-12-28
Packaged: 2019-02-22 21:55:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13175991
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtolife/pseuds/singtolife
Summary: When Lance is welcomed into heaven, he takes on his role as a guardian angel with pride. But when a mysterious fallen angel appears in his life, he soon finds himself having to decide whether he should trust this man with his charge's life or fail his mission.Doesn't help the guy's majorly hot.Angel/Fallen Angel Au





	(Don't) Lift Me Up

**Author's Note:**

> Been working on this forever as part of the Shance Big Bang. It's not all the way complete, but I really need to get it out there so I can move forward with it and my other projects.

He wasn’t sure if he’d felt sunshine like this before, but he knew the rolling, up-and-down rhythm of floating on the waves like he knew his own heartbeat--the never-ending pounding roll both inside and out of his body. 

He also knew he was dead. Knew it as surely as he knew how to float - it was ingrained in a deep part of his being now, a reality of who he was at that moment in time. It was a sense of absolute freedom, of being able to swim to the depths of a clear sea with only the feel of the water slipping across every inch of his body. No worries, no cares, no needs. Only feeling.

And he could still feel it.

Despite prior expectations, he seemed to still have his human shape and senses. The sun felt radiantly warm across his skin as the water dipped around his body in small caresses while the sounds of water and sand colliding again and again played like a ticking clock in the distance, rhythmic and constant.

There weren’t exact memories, names, or faces, but rather impressions of his past life. His heart contained the echoes of both joy and sorrow in equal measure - a rather ordinary life, but one well-lived. He had loved, he had laughed, and he had been a part of many people’s lives. He wasn’t sure the specifics were important as long as the emotions, the fulfillment of his soul remained.

But none of it really mattered in that moment. There in the vast space of this other-world, whatever it may be, he was simply-

“Lance!”

Startled, the boy in question righted himself to vertically tread water. His short brown hair slicked back by the motion of his head lifting out of the water continued to drip wet trails down his bare neck and back. When he glanced down for a second, his distorted view of his lower half told him he only wore a pair of blue swim trunks that revealed his sun-browned skin of his legs and torso. 

Squinting into the bright sunshine, he could just make out an outcrop of rock where a pair of arms were energetically waving to get his attention. With the sun shining behind the figure, the only thing Lance could make out were the arms, short hair, and were those...wings?

Shaking his head in amazement, Lance dove under the waves and began swimming towards them. It took very little energy and a lot less time than he would’ve thought to make it to the shore. He could still feel the gratifying burn of his muscles working, but it never built to uncomfortable levels. 

When his knees started scraping the soft, sandy bottom, he stood and finally took the opportunity to look up. A few hundred feet in front of him, two people waited patiently for him to close the last little bit of distance. 

One was the small figure that had been waving to him earlier. She was dressed in a white and green bikini top with a pink flower across one side of her flat chest. Rather than matching bikini bottoms, she had a pair of swim trunks in the same colors. With her hands on her hips, she smirked at him from behind a pair of overly-large, round glasses. Her short brown hair brushed the tops of her ears before curling out into little peaks on the side.

The man next to her was as large as she was small. He had a hulking figure, but it wasn’t intimidating. He was the epitome of the ‘big teddy bear’ look with thick, muscular arms, a soft gut, warm mocha skin, and a large smile. His yellow and green swim trunks with brown sandals and an orange headband to hold back his hair gave him a sunny look that matched his equally warm expression. 

But what really struck Lance was not the people themselves but the extraordinary wings sprouting from their backs. 

The girl’s wings were like someone took the brightest green neon they could find and turned it into fire. Bright, silver metal lined the top to form a frame that spread outward in a ‘w”’shape. From this seamless base, bright green flames shot what looked like feathers made from a hundred little welding torches.

The man’s wings were less intimidating but more complex. A wide, bronze frame extended outward in large arcs on either side. Thinner bronze rods fanned outward like bones, see-through canvas pulled tight between each one. Lance vaguely recalled words like ‘steampunk’ and ‘flying contraption’ that seemed to describe these wings perfectly.

Lance simply stood there in awe, his eyes wide as he took in their amazing wings, until words started slipping from his mouth almost subconsciously. “Pidge, Hunk…Are those…Are they real? Are you really...?”

They both nodded, their smiles amused as they waited for Lance to figure it out. It took a second to get past the initial shock, but when he did, his mouth fell into a smirk. “And I even got to keep my devilishly good looks,” he practically purred, wiggling his eyebrows.

“Typical, Lance - the first thing you do in heaven is lie.” The small girl, Pidge, rolled her eyes as the large man, Hunk, gave a deep belly laugh.

Crossing his arms as he pouted softly, Lance grumbled, “You’d think heaven would make even a gremlin less sassy.” 

“No chance,” Pidge quips, pushing up her glasses with a smile. 

Lance sulked for a second longer but soon was smiling back, his grin so wide and happy he couldn’t contain it. His arms spread the extra distance the corners of his mouth couldn’t as he wrapped his two friends in as large a hug as he could. He could only physically get so far around them, but his pure joy stretched even further to envelop the trio in his emotion. 

When Lance finally pulled back to look at his friends’ faces, their grins reflected back the happiness of his own. For that moment, they could’ve been triplets, identical in emotion and expression despite their vastly different appearances. It was a twining of their souls which that place was buoying to the surface and filling with sunshine. All the dark parts, the curdling corners of their mind from their past life were fresh and beautiful again as the light of heaven washed them clean.

And they could finally be who they were.

xXx

Hunk and Pidge hadn’t been there much longer than Lance. It didn’t matter how or why as their past wasn’t a part of them anymore, but moving forward, they provided Lance with knowledge they’d had to figure out themselves.

The first thing they taught him was how to summon his wings. Lance had been nervous at first, a lingering feeling of doubt and insecurity shadowing his mind, but his friends had reassured him, telling him it was as easy as opening his eyes. 

And it had been. Once he had known what to feel for, he had simply lifted them from his soul like another extension of his body, a new limb to stretch to the sky in joy. 

His wings had been just as unique to himself as Pidge’s high-tech fire or Hunk’s simplistic invention. Rather than their more technical designs, his had been like the water he’d appeared in. They extended like fins, their edges sharp in half moons as they rippled and floated around him like sapphire gossamer caught in a light breeze. Pidge had laughed at him, said he looked like a water nymph got drunk and hooked up with a flying fish, but he couldn’t have been more pleased with his wings.

He also never got over meeting new people and ogling over their wing designs. There were ones of all colors, sizes, materials, and combinations, the only connection between one and the next being that they sprouted from each person’s back. He had seen a pair made of pink mist spreading from two shimmery half moons and another large, dark, and shredded like tiny paper pieces dipped in night. He had even met someone with branches growing from their back, moss hanging down in sheets of green. 

But the most beautiful and magnificent wings he’d encountered, he only got a glimpse from far away. He’d heard rumors, an endless amount of whispers about an angel with the highest success rate of guardians. They said he wasn’t much older than a century, that he was assigned to the toughest cases and had a perfect record, that he was the youngest angel on record to be considered for avenging. The most common stories, though, were about his golden wings that would slide and open like a fan. Across each section were painted ancient symbols of love and peace that practically glowed with power. No one who saw it could deny his talent and beauty. Even his name, Shiro, meant white in one of the languages of the Earth. 

Even though Lance had never met Shiro, he idolized the other man. Shiro was everything that Lance wanted to be in his new life in heaven. Lance had been overjoyed when he’d been chosen to follow in Shiro’s footsteps as an angel candidate with a guardian specialty. Many of the people he’d met in his short time there had nominated him for the position due to his obvious warm and joyful soul.

Which is how he met Keith. 

“Are you even trying?” Keith scowled, his shaggy black hair shadowing his eyes to make him look even more pissed off. Not to mention that Keith currently had his forearm to Lance’s throat in a threatening gesture.

Lance gave a mighty shove, attempting to draw a breath to respond with some witty comment, but was only able to nudge the body on top of him just slightly. Keith had him pinned after yet another two-second bout in which Lance had attempted to block but had quickly found himself slamming into the ground, his head rebounding painfully. He knew he wouldn’t die from a few major head wounds, but damn, it still hurt like sledgehammer to the skull.

Keith took one more moment to give Lance a disappointed look before sitting up and rolling to the side, immediately getting back to his feet as smooth as a cougar with his lithe muscles rippling. In their sparring arena, an outdoor mix of a gladiator colosseum and smooth, alien technology, he looked right at home in his tight black and gray bodysuit armor. Sharp lines separated the two colors and enunciated his wired muscles as they cut a ‘v’ across his stomach, wrapped around his upper biceps and down his hips to his inner thighs. Two glowing purple slashes of color decorated his chest and high collar before continuing down the back to form the shape of a blade.

Lance could admit Keith looked a holy hell of a lot better than he currently did in the t-shirt and pants he’d summoned up. But they couldn’t all rock alien armor and mullets. 

“I am trying!” Lance finally griped back, spreading his arms and legs like a sad starfish. “It’s not my fault you trained in both your first and afterlife.”

“That has nothing to do with it!” Keith curled his hands into fists, his temper rising. “Anyone can block a head-on attack that simple. Are you even thinking when I come at you? Or does your tiny little brain just overload?”

“Rude!” Lance lifted his head, giving the other man a glare before dropping it back down with a sigh. “Maybe I’m just not cut out to fight demons.”

Keith took a breath to calm himself, uncurling his fists as he sat down beside Lance. “Yeah, okay, that might never be your specialty, but being a guardian is. Someone clearly took your soul and injected it with more than enough empathy for a whole army of guardian angels.” He ignored Lance’s incredulous look at the compliment and kept talking, “But that’s not all you need. How are you going to fight when the demons hunt you down for ruining their plans? What if they come for your charge? Would you be able to defend both them and yourself? Or would you have to abandon them to run away?”

Sighing once again, Lance closed his eyes in defeat. “You’re right. And I know you’re right. It’s just not always easy to remember when I keep failing so spectacularly.”

There was a beat of silence before Keith reached over and flicked Lance on the forehead. Lance bolted up with a squawk of indignation, his eyes narrowed in betrayal. “What was that for?”

“You’re getting stuck in your head, idiot,” Keith stated as he rose to his feet once again. “You’ll never land a punch on me if you’re over-thinking every little move. Believe in yourself a little bit, and your body just might listen to you.” Reaching down to offer his hand, Keith gave Lance an expectant look.

Lance took a second to contemplate the truth in Keith’s words before breaking into a wide smile and letting Keith help him up.

xXx

They started Lance off with a few easier cases to evaluate how he does--a clumsy teenager navigating her way through high school, a crotchety old man with a chip on his shoulder, and new father who had just lost his wife. He treated each person with love and care, guiding them through their rough patches so they could see the beauty of the world again. Once he discovered a turning point in their lives, he was able to manipulate little things around them to make sure they found the right path to follow.

The council had been impressed with his quick successes, declaring he had the skills to handle more difficult cases. They assigned him to work with a thirty-year-old drug addict named Rolo who had gotten himself hung up in gangs, violence, and underground dealings while occasionally dipping his toes into occult practices. Every one of these things made Rolo a prime target for corruption and demonic possession, but Lance was determined to bring him back to the light. 

When he was set to leave, his friends were already out on their own assignments. Hunk had already been assigned to another case involving a girl named Shay who was being abused by her brother as they took care of their aging grandmother. The last Lance had heard, Hunk had been over halfway done with his assignment, having bonded really well with Shay, the trust formed between them making his task infinitely easier. 

Outside of training Lance, Keith had been in training to be a special faction of the avenging angels known as the Blade of Marmora. Not only was he adept at physical combat, but his wings allowed him to blend in with the various demons of the underworld. Similar to bat wings in shape, leather stretched between thin, bone-like rods of silver. On each of the tips, though, were razor sharp daggers shaped like spikes. Everyone in their group had various darkly-themed wings that most people would only expect to see on evil beings. While that sometimes made other angels become wary of them, they learned to be proud of their unique opportunity and skills. 

Pidge was the only one not in the field as a part of the intelligence and strategy unit. She spent her days gathering what information she could about angels who had been captured by demons or trapped in hell. After her brother from her Earthly life had been taken by a demonic group, she’d specifically applied for the assignment in an effort to find him again.

With how busy everyone was, Lance was only able to see his friends on special occasions, but he wasn’t too upset about it. He knew everyone was out helping in the best way they could, and if he really needed them, they’d be there in a heartbeat to help him out.

So he followed his charge alone down the dimly lit streets of the seedier part of town. Rolo wasn’t hard to spot, stumbling drunkenly down the street with his arm around who Lance knew was his girlfriend Nyma. The two visually fit together well with Rolo’s punky, spiked white hair and Nyma’s blond dreads. They dressed similarly in scandalously revealing clothing that highlighted Nyma’s large breasts and Rolo’s strong chest. 

Sighing, Lance slowly strolled along behind the wasted pair as they weaved and yelled their way back to their shared apartment. So far, Lance had hidden his presence, observing from a distance to get a read on the situation, but it was clear someone needed to step in soon before one of the idiots passed out and brained themselves on the stairs or something. Not to mention all the different drugs they’d mixed with their drinks. That had to be totally healthy.

With his eyes trained on the drunken couple in front of him, Lance didn’t notice another figure come up to walk beside him until the other man spoke.

“Looks like you got stuck with a tough case,” came a deep voice from his right. Lance, taken completely off guard, leapt away and nearly fell into a trashcan in surprise, his eyes going huge in shock as he promptly fell on his butt. 

The stranger, a largely muscular man dressed in form-fitting black and grey armor, tried to politely hold back his laughter as he offered a hand to help Lance back to his feet. “Sorry about that. I thought you would have heard me walk up,” he explained in an equally amused and penitent tone.

Lance hesitated a second before allowing himself to be helped up. “Ah, no worries. People are falling for me all the time, so it’s about time I get a taste of my own medicine,” he posed cockily, hands on his hips as he tried to play cool. 

At the same time, Lance gave the man a once-over, taking in his short black hair, white bangs, dark grey eyes, and scarred face. The guy was built like a rock with a broad chest and firm arms, and his legs had a large amount of sculpted muscle along his thighs and calves. Added to the visible scars and armor, the man was clearly battle-ready. But his face seemed kind and open, his lips quick to quirk up into a smile while lines around his eyes made him look like someone who’d known happiness quite often. 

Lance’s heart gave a little tug in vague recognition, but he had no clue where he would have seen the other guy. He’d never met someone with such a specific hair-coloring or dressed in that particular style of armor before, so maybe it was just a similarity to a friend he’d known back in his time on Earth. 

“It sounds like you’re a danger to people’s health then and should be taken off the streets,” the guy quipped back with a smile, his eyes bright and full of humor. 

Lance let out a nervous giggle, his eyes darting down the street to where Rolo had paused to corner Nyma against a glass storefront to swap spit. The dude was responding to his jokes? Like, who the hell is he? If he could see Lance without Lance wanting him to, then the guy had to be supernatural. Plus, he had to be super weird to appreciate Lance’s fake cockiness. He didn’t feel like an angel, but he clearly wasn’t a demon either…

“Yeah...You know, breaking bones like I’m breaking hearts,” Lance gave the man his finger guns to try to cover his nervousness. 

There was an awkward pause, but before Lance could even think it through,he was already asking. “So, um, hate to ask a magician to reveal his secrets, but what… are you? I mean, you clearly know what I am so…” he trailed off uncertainly, not even sure what he was saying.

The man took a moment to respond, gazing into the distance where the first peeks of morning light were beginning to appear. “Just someone who wants to see you succeed,” he returned his gaze to Lance, a sad smile taking over for his previously bright and happy one.

Taken aback by the answer, Lance opens his mouth to respond but is interrupted by a surprised yell as his drunken charge loses his balance and falls flat on his face. Nyma screams with laughter at her boyfriend’s stupidity, and Lance just shakes his head in resigned disappointment.

When he turns back to the man, Lance finds that the guy had simply disappeared, slipped away into the shadows as suddenly as he’d come.

Bewildered, Lance stared in confusion at the heavy darkness, wondering if he’d simply made up the whole encounter, but soon, the sound of Rolo vomiting breaks his concentration, and he reluctantly jogs off towards his charge.

xXx

Lance was really an interesting angel.

A one-second distraction had dropped his guard completely, and Shiro had been able to step back into the darkness and erase his presence enough to fool the other man. Watching him hadn’t been difficult at all - Lance was so preoccupied watching his own charge that he hadn’t felt Shiro doing the same to him. 

For weeks.

Luckily, Shiro didn’t mean Lance any harm - the opposite really. Lance was something special, something Shiro hadn’t seen...ever.

For one, he was gorgeous. He had rich blue eyes and a sassy mouth that seemed to get him in trouble more often than not. Not to mention that his skin glowed with a healthy tan and his hair curled just slightly on the ends to give him a carefree, windswept look. 

But what was really breathtaking was his soul. Shiro had seen the brightness of Lance’s soul the second Lance had arrived in the city. He’d appeared like a flash, sauntering into his world with a pure and warm light that seemed to chase away the eternal chill in his own soul. 

Maybe for a minute, for a second perhaps, he had felt whole again.


End file.
